The runner is a dark light, glowing.
The screaming faces, flying past me again.
Like tigers in my face, roaring, fading.

Bloody glass pieces:
My soul.
I feel, because I am human.
Could you save me?
No one responds.

Nine times out of ten, the runner is a dark light, glowing.
This runner is me.
He runs into the comforting darkness.
My love -- I remember her; she used to smile.
When we were all together, and familiarity existed.
I remember friendship.

I am pain.
Do I sleep?
Does pain fade here?
A web of flickering words I lived.
Now fading.
The hurt I flee like a burning arrow.

Discord I hear every day
As I work from darkness to darkness, never seeing the sun.
Nothing means nothing;
Nothing was all there ever was.
I feel young again, as I sleep.
Can you make me whole?

Heal me in my panick.
Tend me in my sickness.
Love me.
No one loves, when they are awake.
No one loves, because all is selfishness, and calculated harm.
All is danger, and pain stalks the jungle of adulthood.
The vines we threw off as children;
They grew around us as adults.
"I am ugly."
"Everyone hates me."
We are all dead,
And all the same.

Humanity in the waking world has no face;
Every generation is the same.
How many walking fortresses are there, supported by decades of pain?
Modern life hurts.
I am unhappy.
So tired by your waking death; here only I am free.

Naked here, I am me.
Propertyless and free.
Secure in my home, against the war and money tithes exacted,
No more oppression of me owed by the theories they constructed.
I know I am dreaming, living in a world I made up;
  It is only a dream.
It is the only real place, though.
The world of my body: it is gone.

How long I've slept in their brutish world, going through the motions,
Mocking it, showing my contempt in everything I do.
I have no friends, own no property, hate money, reject the meaningless
  Spoils of a dead people.
I am honest at least;
I am as naked as I have ever been.

I'm free from you, as long as I'm dead.
Your world of believers,
They line up with torches at my doorstep,
Unable to cross the threshold,
Because I'm dead.
Here at last, I am king of my world;
When I am awake, I just want to fight the slavers.
When I am asleep, I am free, and slavery cannot touch me.

In my dream:
A village.  Laughter.
Someone singing by the fire.
I am a child again.
The pathways around the garden I explore, giving me purpose in life.
The dew in the air I taste.
I have a dog; I have a friend.
Life makes sense.
A pleasant place.

The rest I can't remember.
I grew up, grew old by a decade and a half
One long night.
Why do I have the wrong body?
Why does nothing work?
Why do people threaten me with death when I don't work?
The currency, it is theirs; the control, it is theirs.
I want to die, like they want.
It doesn't feel good, being around them.

How can I get away from your world?
Is there any other exit?
I don't want to die.
I don't want to wake.
I never do.
Never.
Not for a decade and a half.

The runner is a dark light, glowing.
The screaming faces, again.
I am the runner.
I see my pain, in the glass of my soul.
And so I wake.

I am free for a few seconds.
Remembering is always painful.
But now I am fully awake;
Safely dead.
I act out.  I live.  Some life.

It isn't me.

 - "The Runner," Connelly Barnes, 2007-12-15